Isolation (Book 1): Shut In Page 11

  With a sigh, he turned from the window and headed back into the den to watch the news.

  ◆◆◆

  “I've got the gas,” Hal offered, cracking his door as Ellie pulled in at the pump; she just hoped she'd picked the right side, since she hadn't bothered to check where the tank was.

  Kind of embarrassing, since she'd had plenty of time while wiping the car down inside and out to notice that detail.

  The teenager was leaning out to stand when Hannah reached forward from the backseat and caught his arm. He glanced back with a curious look, just in time to fumble as she passed him a pair of latex surgical gloves and a bottle of hand sanitizer.

  His expression became bemused. “I'm just going two feet to pump gas. I won't be running into anyone.”

  Their traveling companion once again proffered the items, expression firm. “Wear the gloves at all times while outside the car, then when you're finished and ready to come back in take them off and throw them away, without touching the outside of them, then clean your hands and your credit card with the hand sanitizer. I don't have to tell you not to touch anything without the gloves, do I?”

  Hal shook his head wryly, but offered no protest as he accepted the items and laboriously put the gloves on, tugging his fingers into the correct openings one by one. “You realize this adds an extra few minutes to this stop, which increases the chances of some wackadoo running up to the car and trying to cause problems?”

  “Then hurry it up!” Brock snapped.

  Ellie saw an opportunity and pounced. “If it's going to take that long, I really need to use the bathroom.”

  She wasn't particularly surprised to find that Hannah immediately fumbled to give her gloves and a bottle of sanitizer as well. She could understand the woman having a box of the thin, light gloves, but where was she getting all this sanitizer from?

  “Right,” she said ruefully. “Toss the gloves, clean my hands.”

  “Not just your hands,” her traveling companion said sharply. “Clean the seat before using it, then your bum and the backs of your legs afterwards, as well as any other part of you that touches anything in there. A bathroom's got to be the worst place for catching this thing.”

  Ellie suddenly had serious second thoughts in spite of the pressure in her bladder. “Maybe we should just find a secluded place to stop somewhere and take turns behind a bush.”

  “Maybe we should,” Brock agreed. “If you lend me a card and tell me the PIN, or some cash, I can go in and buy toilet paper. And maybe camping gear and other necessities if they have them. Especially food and water . . . with luck, we might be able to get all the way to Missouri without having to go anywhere other people have been, aside from brief stops at the gas pump.”

  She had to admit she liked that idea, and Hannah seemed to as well. Although the fact that the couple was expecting her to pay for it was a bit irritating; she sure as heck wasn't telling some stranger she didn't exactly like her PIN. Still, at the younger woman's insistence she dug into her wallet and handed over a few hundred bucks from the emergency reserve she always carried while traveling, along with the gloves and hand sanitizer she'd been given. Brock took the money and headed into the convenience store to see what he could find.

  Ellie had a feeling she'd be as crushed by worries about debt as Nick by the end of this trip. But that was a problem for later, when she was back with her children holding them safe in her arms.

  Hal rapped on her window, then called through it. “Want to swap for a bit?”

  In the rearview mirror she saw Hannah scowling at the teenager, maybe for touching the car. She ignored the fussy woman and shook her head at Hal. “We just got started. I'm good for five or six hours at least.”

  He shrugged and leaned back against the car to wait for the gas to pump, drawing a sound of mingled worry and frustration from Hannah. Ellie wasn't sure whether to be amused or annoyed herself; on the one hand she didn't like the other woman dictating everything they did with obnoxious, time wasting precautions. But there was no reason to needlessly antagonize her, either.

  Besides, Zolos was a real threat; the fewer things the young man touched outside the car, the better.

  Hal eventually finished with the gas and peeled off his gloves, carelessly splashing some sanitizer on his palm and then halfheartedly spreading it around his hands and his card. Then he dropped back onto the passenger's seat, shooting Ellie a look that invited commiseration. She gave him a reassuring pat on the arm, and they settled in to wait for Brock.

  The man emerged a few minutes later, hauling a case of bottled water under one arm and lugging several plastic bags in the other, with a few tents and sleeping bags awkwardly slung on his back. He seemed to be struggling with it all, and Hal climbed back out to help him while Ellie popped the trunk.

  “Here,” Brock said as he slipped into the backseat, handing out bottles of water. “The convenience store was looking a little bare, but I grabbed a bunch of jerky, cans of roasted nuts, and trail mix along with the camping stuff. We should be set for the trip.”

  He handed her up a receipt and her change, all of which was damp from hand sanitizer. Ellie would've expected Hannah to blow a gasket even so, since money changed hands so often, but the woman either didn't notice or wasn't in the mood to chew out her husband.

  Ellie might've been more worried about who'd last been touching these soggy bills herself, but she was too busy noticing how few of them she'd gotten back . . . even gas station food and camping gear shouldn't have cost this much. The receipt confirmed her traveling companion hadn't tried to pocket some of the change, just that either gas station prices had really gotten out of control lately, or the opportunistic owners had decided to take advantage of the crisis to jack up their prices.

  Okay, fine. They had what they needed, and she really needed to go. So she started the car and got them moving again.

  The next ten or so minutes were agonizing. Ellie deliberately drove on less used roads that would still connect to I-15, not just to avoid more potential roadblocks but in the hope of finding a nice, secluded place for a pit stop.

  She finally found one where the road was in a low depression, with an earth berm along one side to keep noise from passing vehicles from disturbing the private homes on the other side. Since the houses all had fences as well, most of them completely obscuring view, that left a nice strip of mostly secluded ground.

  Well, beggars couldn't be choosers.

  Ellie pulled over and started to open the door to climb out of the car, then paused with annoyance when a pair of latex gloves and bottle of hand sanitizer were shoved in her face. “You're kidding,” she told Hannah. The woman's expression suggested she wasn't. At all. “We're in the middle of nowhere, and I'm peeing on a strip of dirt on the side of the Interstate! There's zero chance of me touching anything someone infected with Zolos touched.”

  “We can't know that,” her traveling companion insisted. “This virus is no joke, El, and we can't take any chances.”

  They definitely weren't friendly enough for this lady to be giving her a nickname.

  “At this rate we're going to use up all the gloves and hand sanitizer on BS,” Hal pointed out. “We won't have them when we really need them if we ever do have to do something around other people.”

  “This trip won't last that long,” Brock said. “And at this rate we'll be home tomorrow, glad we were careful every step of the way.”

  Ellie thought it was a bit optimistic to assume they'd get all the way from Los Angeles to Kansas City in a bit more than a day. They'd have to drive practically nonstop, without running into any obstacles and likely speeding the whole way.

  Still, she wasn't sure it was worth a fight. They were Hannah's gloves and hand sanitizer, after all, and if the woman wanted to waste them all taking unnecessary precautions that was her business. “Fine,” she said, snatching the items and starting to open the door again.

  She nearly lost her temper when Hannah once again he
ld her back. “The gloves. Before you go outside.”

  Ellie was seconds from losing control of her bladder and making a mess everywhere, but she grit her teeth and tugged on the gloves, not bothering with the right fingers. Then she bolted over the berm to the other side.

  Less than a minute later she was back, peeling off the gloves and tossing them aside. She squeezed some sanitizer on her hands and smeared it around, then threw open the driver's side door and tossed the bottle back to Hannah. “Happy?”

  “No need to be snippy about it,” the woman said. “I'm doing this for your benefit.”

  She held her breath to avoid snapping back, putting the car in gear and getting them moving again.

  An awkward silence filled the car as they continued on. Ellie thought Hannah might be embarrassed about the confrontation and wanting to give some time for things to settle down, and she was sure Brock and Hal were keeping quiet to stay out of it.

  She was wrong about the other woman's reasons, however, as she quickly realized the moment Hannah opened her mouth five or so minutes later. “Ellen-”

  “Eleanor, actually,” Ellie interrupted as gently as she could.

  The woman breathed in sharply through her nose as if she'd just been flipped off. “Eleanor, we need to talk about your reckless disregard for everyone's safety.”

  Ellie glanced in the rearview mirror at her traveling companion. “Are you serious?”

  “We're very serious,” Brock chimed in, although he had the grace to at least sound a bit apologetic.

  Hannah kept going with fussy determination. “It's not just your own life on the line. If you want to run around on your own licking toilet seats and sucking off random truckers-”

  Ellie nearly jerked the wheel in surprise. “Excuse me?” she said, voice coming out louder and higher pitched than she'd intended. Where had that come from?

  “Hey, let's not exaggerate things here,” Hal cut in.

  “Exaggerate?” Ellie shouted. “She just called me a slut because I don't want to do a full body decontamination every time I set foot outside this car! What's wrong with you, Nowak?”

  Brock also cut in, obviously not wanting this to turn into a screaming fight in this enclosed space. “That might've been a bit harsh, Ellie, but we are concerned that you might not be taking the proper precautions. And as my wife said, it's not just your life you risk when you don't.”

  “Why are you even jumping on me about this?” Ellie demanded. “I put on the stupid gloves and did all the other paranoid stuff you wanted, didn't I?”

  “Well yes, but it's your attitude,” Hannah replied primly. “Like the fact that you call me paranoid for taking sensible precautions. I can't be on your case twenty-four seven, and if you don't take this seriously it could lead to disaster for me and my husband. I'm not about to let that happen.”

  Ellie breathed through her nose for several seconds, struggling to control her temper. “Hannah, I'm not a child. I'm almost a decade older than you. I'm not stupid, either. Nor am I careless. I want to get home safely to my children just as much as you want to get home safely to your family. Just because we disagree on what measures are necessary doesn't mean it has to be an issue. Like I said, I'm willing to do things your way if it'll make you happy.”

  There was a long pause. “I'm not sure that's good enough,” Hannah finally said.

  Ellie couldn't help it, she exploded again. “What else can I do? You want to tie me up and toss me in the trunk until we get home? Literally what else can I do? At what point will you just accept you got what you wanted and shut up? Do you just want to fight, is that it?”

  The woman took several shuddering breaths, and in the rearview mirror Ellie saw tears begin streaming from her eyes. “I don't want to fight at all. I hate fighting. Why are you making me have to do this?”

  Brock put his arms around his wife and held her protectively, shooting Ellie a glare. “That's enough, Eleanor.”

  Ellie liked to think she was reasonable and understanding, but at that moment she genuinely despised the couple in the backseat.

  Still, what good would it do to say anything? They obviously weren't even going to try to be reasonable, and there really was literally nothing else she could do to fix this situation. Aside from kick them out of the car she paid for.

  But she wasn't about to condemn two people to possible death just because they were jerks. They were just scared and in a difficult situation, same as her. It was only for a day or two, and then she'd be home and she'd never have to see either of them again.

  Ellie focused on the road and turned on the radio, hoping that would distract everyone and prevent any more arguments. Although what she heard over the airwaves wasn't any better.

  “-infected rioters at LAX have completely broken containment,” a man was saying in a worried tone. “Law enforcement was too slow to set up a secondary cordon around the airport, and caution that any number of people potentially exposed to Zolos might have made it out into the city. We strongly urge all residents within ten blocks of the airport to remain indoors and avoid all contact with unfamiliar people.”

  Looked as if they'd got out just in time.

  The next half hour or so of the drive was mostly quiet, everyone listening to the radio. Ellie even allowed herself to hope that the grim news they'd heard would remind everyone that there were more serious things at stake than petty squabbles. She certainly hoped so.

  When Hannah said she needed to take a pit stop, Ellie didn't argue, pulling off I-15 and finding a secluded side road where the woman would feel more comfortable. If that was even possible for her. Brock left the car with his wife, either needing to go himself or out of a desire to protect her from danger. Although the dark glances they kept turning back towards Ellie made her wonder where they thought the danger lay.

  She watched the couple walk away from the car, trying to remind herself that it was better to think the best of people, if she could.

  “That wasn't cool,” Hal said abruptly, making her jump and jerk her head towards him. “What they said to you, I mean,” he added hastily.

  Ellie couldn't help but be bitterly amused at the fact that the teenager had waited until after the others were gone to jump to her defense. Well, she was a big girl and could fight her own battles. “No reason we can't get along until we get back to Missouri,” she said, as reasonably as she could.

  He shrugged and idly tapped on the window, in the direction the couple had gone. “Or, you know, you could put the car in gear and keep driving until they're an unpleasant memory. Back where I'm from we believe in a little thing called guests being respectful to their host.”

  She could appreciate the wry humor of the comment, since they were all from there. She shook her head. “Ditching them in the middle of nowhere, and taking their stuff with us, is kind of an extreme response. Even if they are acting like jerks.”

  Hal leaned back in his seat, a bit sullenly she thought. After half a minute or so he cleared his throat, forcing lightness into his tone. “So . . . Eleanor, huh?”

  Ellie snorted. “I know, right? Kind of a granny name.”

  “Hottest granny I've seen,” he teased.

  She felt her face flushing and looked out the window. Holy cow, he was immature.

  It took a full ten minutes before the newlyweds returned, climbing into the backseat without a word and wearing stony expressions. Ellie didn't say anything either, just turned the car around and started them back towards the Interstate.

  At least Hal was decent company. Even so, the next day or two were going to be the longest of her life.

  Chapter Seven: Southern Utah Badlands

  After enduring such a stressful, exhausting, terrifying day, Ellie was relieved to find that the next several hours of the drive were fairly uneventful.

  Hannah and Brock even settled down, not starting any arguments on the drive. Although that might've been because they were all too busy listening to things fall apart on the radio, with the pa
ndemic apparently spreading like wildfire through Southern California and Las Vegas.

  Needless to say, they were all glad they were putting the area behind them.

  They crossed the Utah border a bit after midnight, and not long after that encountered a roadblock preventing them from even approaching St. George. The police were redirecting traffic around the city on smaller roads, which slowed Ellie's group down a bit but didn't present any issues otherwise.

  St. George was a peaceful little place, nestled in landscape that was breathtakingly rugged even in the darkness, the lights spread out below seeming a reflection of the vast expanse of stars above. It didn't look as if it existed in a world where a deadly virus was threatening to kill everyone.

  Then again, that was what the roadblock had been for.

  Not long after getting back on I-15, Brock cleared his throat in a way that suggested he wanted to talk. Ellie immediately tensed at hearing it. “Ellie, Hal,” he said. His tone was nervous, almost wheedling, as if he was also afraid this might turn unpleasant. “I've found a nice secluded campsite on my phone that's not too far ahead. I think we should stop for the night.”

  “No,” Ellie immediately said. “I need to get home as soon as possible.”

  Hannah jumped in. “You're getting tired, Eleanor. We all are. I think we could do with a bit of rest.”

  “I'm doing just fine,” Hal said with complete confidence. “I can go for the rest of the night.”

  “I'm not sure you can, and if you nod off it's our lives too,” Hannah snapped. “You mean to kill us all just because you want to get home a few hours earlier? We have a say in this, too.”

  Ellie felt her heart sinking as she saw this conversation heading in the same direction the last one had. She breathed in sharply through her nose, taking several seconds to compose herself.

  She'd dealt with more than a few stressful situations in her job. She knew that people had a hard time in those moments, and she'd learned to remind herself that it was the situation, not the people, that was the problem. They were all trying the best they could.